In 1775, when Goethe had first been invited to Weimar by the then eighteen-year-old Karl August, he had embarked on a long round of love affairs, drunkenness and pranks. Goethe and Karl August had roistered through the streets of Weimar, sometimes wrapped in white sheets to scare those who believed in ghosts. They had stolen barrels from a local merchant to roll down hills, and flirted with peasant girls – all in the name of genius and freedom. And, of course, no one could complain since Karl August, the young ruler, was involved. But those wild years were long gone, and with them the theatrical declamations of love, the tears, the smashing of glasses and naked swimming that had scandalized the locals. In 1788, six years before Humboldt’s first visit, Goethe had shocked Weimar society one more time when he had taken the uneducated Christiane Vulpius as his lover. Christiane, who worked as a seamstress in Weimar, gave birth to their son August less than two years later. Ignoring convention and malicious gossip, Christiane and August lived with Goethe.

[c.1794] It was during this period that Goethe began to fling both his arms around whenever he went for a walk – provoking alarmed glances from his neighbours. He had discovered, he finally explained to a friend, that this exaggerated swinging of one’s arms was a remnant from the four-legged animal – and therefore one of the proofs that animals and humans had a common ancestor. ‘That’s how I walk more naturally,’ he said, and couldn’t have cared less if Weimar society regarded this rather strange behaviour as unrefined.

Without knowing the name of the trampled flowers beneath them The fallen birds grow tired of waiting for the wind

Praying won’t change anythingWhat will change the present is the resolve to fightOh, you pigs that laugh at our willingness to step over the corpses and advanceYour “peace“ is that of livestock, a false prosperityLet us be free like the dying, starving wolvesThe shame of confinement signals the counterattackBeyond the castle walls, the hunter slaughters his preyHis body is consumed by raging impulseHe pierces the twilight sunWith his crimson bow and arrow!"

I posted this piece a month ago in the main music thread, after hearing a pipe band play the theme around my birthday at a Victorian reenactment festival. I felt truly moved and inspired, to the extent that I have since created many variations on the melody (theme and variations form). The passion, heroism, proud and knowing presence make me dream of a grander, more emphatic and noble future for my people. I have started to use the major pentatonic scale when writing music more generally, in an effort to recreate the sound.

Now that I have discovered the lyrics, I feel assured in my sense that the experience was not a coincidence. They do seem rather Beta

You know that you are dead when someone puts you into a box and you are unable to devise a way to get out of it